Visionary Leadership and the Chakrasby Corinne McLaughlinThere are seven steps in expressing your vision and passion effectively in the world, related to your seven chakras or etheric energy centers. To become a practical visionary, you need to understand how energy flows through your centers and where there are blocks or imbalances. The ideal is to have visionary energy from your highest chakra (at the top of your head) flowing unimpeded through each chakra until it is grounded in a practical way through your lowest chakra, the root chakra. The following steps will help you realize your intention:

How to Use Your Chakra Energies to Manifest Your Vision There are seven steps in expressing your vision and passion effectively in the world, related to your seven chakras or etheric energy centers. To become a practical visionary, you need to understand how energy flows through your centers and where there are blocks or imbalances. The ideal is to have visionary energy from your highest chakra (at the top of your head) flowing unimpeded through each chakra until it is grounded in a practical way through your lowest chakra, the root chakra. The following steps will help you realize your intention.1. Align your vision (crown, or pineal center). The first step is to focus your attention in your crown chakra at the top of your head. Affirm your intention to align with your soul, your higher purpose and your core values, guided by concern for the common good. Then take some time in the silence to turn within and ask for an intuitive vision. A vision is a specific, compelling picture of a desirable future that is achievable and appropriate. It includes a long-term, whole-systems perspective. Vision can be described as a field that brings energy into form. It may come in words, pictures or symbols, or just as a sensed energy. It may be about embodying a quality of energy, and/or doing something. For example, my friend Daniel Greenberg is an educator who is deeply concerned about global warming and the destruction of the environment. He wanted students to learn how to create a more sustainable future and receive university credit for living and studying in ecovillages around the world. So he created a nonprofit called Living Routes through which students can do this. Your vision may be learning how to be more loving toward your family, for example, or it may be an idea like promoting Spirit in business. When you’re clear about your vision for the future, it helps to constantly reaffirm and articulate it to create a coherent and magnetic field of energy around it. Having a clear vision will start magnetizing people, resources and ideas toward you. 2. Shape your vision into a clear mission with strategy and goals (brow, or ajna, center). Focus your energy and intention in the intuitive brow center in the middle of your forehead. Think clearly, and create a specific mission to describe how you will achieve your vision. Next, create a strategic plan and clear goals as steps to achieve your mission. Your goals will provide focal points for your attention and will attract energy, because energy follows thought. Create SMART but flexible goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed. Then prioritize your time and commitments, which is like creating a magic circle to work within—inscribing boundaries that contain and harness your energy. Without clear boundaries, you will be tempted to take on too much and dissipate your energy. You have to be able to say no to some things and prioritize others. If your larger vision is learning how to be more loving toward your family, your specific mission might be to appreciate each family member daily and express gratitude more frequently. If your vision is creating Spirit in business, your specific mission might be to create an organization that hosts a monthly public forum with dialogues among local business leaders to create mutual support.3. Communicate your mission creatively and sound a clear note (throat center). Your throat center is your creative will center and can help you be disciplined, imaginative and innovative in how you express your mission. It focuses and directs your will to accomplish your goals and project a clear thoughtform of your mission. It helps you focus on opportunities and solutions, not problems. Get feedback from others about how clear and compelling your communication of your mission is. You may want to employ new media technologies, for example, as well as face-to-face communication. Research the best ways to get your message to others, and if appropriate, develop a public relations strategy. 4. Develop good relationships to ensure support (heart center). Reach out to other people to enlist their support and collaboration in helping you create a harmonious environment to manifest your vision. The best way to reach out is from the heart—by being sensitive, respectful and appreciative. Express gratitude on a regular basis for help you’ve received. Marc Lesser, founder of Brush Dance, said that he learned to take a few minutes each day to appreciate an employee, to thank them for a job well done or to just listen to their concerns. Simple things like this can make people feel supported. He found that generosity with his time can be as important as generosity with his money. It’s important to develop good listening skills so that people feel heard. Don’t make communication a one-way street. Encourage team spirit, and build a sense of community and trust with people who are drawn to your vision. Agree on a process for resolving any conflicts that might emerge so that your relationships will be harmonious. 5.Energize your mission with emotional enthusiasm (solar plexus center). To generate emotional power, confidence and enthusiasm for your mission, you need to energize your solar plexus center at your navel and express the dynamic “fire in the belly” needed to ignite others and attract allies and supporters. You need a burning desire to make the vision manifest and the passion to do whatever it takes to see it through. Enthusiasm is contagious and ignites others. Risk taking and playfulness bring excitement to your project.

Many good spiritual people try to keep their attention out of the solar plexus center and the next two lower ones, wrongly thinking that these centers aren’t spiritual. Or they may repress the energy in their solar plexus center or it may be depleted, and they wonder why their visions don’t manifest.

To kindle your passion and enthusiasm about a new project, you could brainstorm and write down the reasons you want to do this project, whom it will help, and what you enjoy about it. You can also talk to other people about why you want to do your mission and what inspires you about it and ask for their feedback and support. You can also read about similar initiatives around the country and attend conferences on this theme, because this can energize you.

6. Attract resources (sexual/financial center). The sexual center is the life force center of vitality. It’s about not only concerned with sexual procreation and attracting people but also with vitality and attracting prosperity. Madison Avenue clearly knows this as they use sex to sell everything. If this life force energy is inhibited or blocked, financial resources may be lacking. Scarcity consciousness around money and lack of generosity also block the flow. Focusing energy in this center will make your mission vital, attractive and compelling—even if it’s a public forum on business. It will attract investors, donors and/or paying customers.

7. Ground your vision with practical, sustainable strategies (root/survival center). Here is where the rubber meets the road—where your vision and mission meet real human need and where you need clear strategies for survival, security and safety. The root center at the base of your spine is the life-giving principle. Honoring this grounding energy, you create a basic survival strategy, interface carefully with local bureaucracies, make sure that you are following legal, financial and health requirements and deal with physical-plane realities such as buildings and transportation. You also make sure that you’ve created a healthy, comfortable and safe environment for people.

You can’t have successful business, for example, without renting a meeting room or at least finding a comfortable living room, setting up a business or nonprofit to receive money and pay bills, keeping records of your expenses and income and filing yearly taxes. Too many visionaries come up with great ideas and announce their events or projects, thinking that the rest will magically fall out of the sky without them having to do the hard work to organize it or paying someone else to do it. Some spiritual types seem to be allergic to the physical world!

Through the process of spiritual growth and expansion of consciousness, each chakra will open eventually and radiate balanced energy. Your inner world affects your outer expression in the world. The key is to appreciate and love each chakra; each one is equally spiritual and important. Remember that Spirit and matter are simply different frequencies of energy along the same spectrum. Your crown center and root center are different frequencies, each with a specific, sacred function that is essential to your overall well-being and that of your mission or project.

To hone your practical leadership skills or simply become a more effective and confident person in the world, attend a Visionary Leadership training, and learn the above process and other techniques more in depth.